by Tim Marquitz
But her face burned.
Nina opened her eyes to find herself staring directly into the sun. She squinted, catching the fragments of a partially collapsed roof and a bare beam once covered by wooden shingles dividing the gap. Nina pulled her hat down and rubbed her eyes, but couldn't get rid of the sting.
Her mouth tasted like she'd et raw shitbird for breakfast. Between the deaduns beating their rotting selves against their bastion of faith and the arguments between the living, there'd been no peace and she’d slept a might fitful and sometimes not at all.
Speaking of fits, an argument seemed to have started up in No Man’s Land. She heard Strobridge and Manning's voices raised with smatterings from others. Must have been that and the beam of sun on her face that’d woke her. She yawned and frowned as she rubbed her crusty eyes.
“You awake?” Pa said from right next to her.
“Who can sleep?”
Pa cleared his throat and sighed. “Let’s go try’n bridle that ruckus.”
Nina whined and sat up, moving out of the sun. “Who cares what they're jawin' about? Me and you just need to figure out what we're gonna do.”
Pa clicked his tongue. “I hate to say it, but gotta reckon our fates are intertwined like pigs in filth. Ain’t nobody movin’ without flingin’ a little crap our way.”
Nina shook her head and sighed, then sat up and ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. Red Thunder watched them from the other side of the fire. It was impossible to tell if the Indian was tired, pissed off, or about to break into a war dance. In any case, there was an intensity to his every move, a sort of coiled energy.
Nina stretched her neck, moving her head side to side. “That may be true, but you think when the shit flies anyone will check to see if we’re keepin’ up? They’ll leave us high and dry. Every one of ‘em.”
“Not Mister Manning. He seems a good sort.”
“Pa, neither of us know what the man's gonna do. You taught me that.”
Pa smiled. Nina could see the pride in his eyes. “I did teach you that.”
“We need to make sure we can get to that wheelbarrow when the time comes.”
Pa put his hand on Nina’s shoulder. “What are you going to do then? Roll me uphill? Push my lard ass down a rock-strewn bank and across Maples Crick? No, girl. Comes to that, you leave me behind and go to high ground.”
She glared at him.
“Nina girl, I’ll put a bullet in my own head if I got to, and you won’t have time to shake that pretty head of yours.” Pa took her hand, squeezing hard. “My last, dying wish will always be to give my daughter a chance at life. To be safe and happy. Don’t you deny me that, you hear?”
Nina sniffed, knowing he was right, but at the same time not sure she could live without him. She nodded, just to stifle that sort of talk.
“Good. Now let’s go see what all the fuss is about. They’re making my head throb.”
“Stay off the foot, Pa. I’ll see what’s what.” Nina stood on wobbly legs, her whole body sore as hell and her heart stone-heavy. She got some fresh water from the bucket by the well entrance, washed out her mouth, spat, drank down a ladle-full of the brackish stuff. It was cool and had an earthy taste, but felt good going down. Nina re-tied her tangled mess of hair and splashed a little of the cool water on her face. Much better. She needed to piss, but it could wait. She’d hate to miss something important.
Out in No Man's Land, Buck and Manning represented their side, while Strobridge and the Daggetts represented Over There. Marshal Oden and Father Mathias had taken up positions on either side of the group, as if expecting a scrap.
No one was waving any guns around; at least, not yet. That was a start.
She stepped in next to Manning, keeping her hat pulled low over her eyes, just enough to see that son of a bitch Strobridge from the neck down and enough to keep Mean George’s Spencer in plain sight.
Manning glanced at Nina. “We're just discussing the possibility of leaving.”
“Everyone agrees we can't stay here,” Father Mathias nodded, one arm tucked beneath his other arm’s elbow and his narrow chin in his hand. “At least not much longer.”
“What happened to your bastion of faith, Father?” Nina asked. She didn't mean for it to come out so smart-assed, just wanted to dig a little on the holy man to find out what made him tick. He sure wasn't going to provide information willingly.
Then Mason Daggett decided to add more tinder. “We been waiting for a host of angels and a cavalry of saints and prophets. They not comin'?” He smelled like a damn whiskey still. His brother, George, snickered.
“The bastion of faith is us, my daughter. Our spirits. Our beliefs. Did you think I meant this ramshackle building, these thin, brittle walls of crumbling adobe and rotten wood?”
“Well, despite whatever’s happening here I still don't believe in your god, Father, and I'm guessin' these hilljack Daggetts don't, either. That probably messes up your plans, huh?”
“No, my daughter.” She sensed Mathias's smile even though her eyes were down. “It only strengthens my resolve to bring you all into the light.”
“Question ain't if we're leavin',” Mason Daggett said, sneering, “it's when. As in, right fuckin' now. That's this hilljack’s vote.” Mason tossed a little volume at Nina.
“Mine too,” his brother chimed in, then added “Injun bitch” under his breath.
“You’d best stow that talk,” Manning said low to Mean George.
“Or what?”
Nina turned slightly. “Hey, I don’t need you speaking up for me,” she said sidelong.
“Excuse me, but it ain’t just for you. I’m tired of this blowhard’s gas.”
George’s screw-mouth twisted up and his eyes tightened, but it was Mason who spoke up, stepping forward face-to-face with Manning. “Fuck you, ya Yankee bastard.”
“I’m no Yankee,” Manning said, pushing his face closer until the brim of his hat touched Mason’s forehead. “And you need to lay off the rot-gut.”
“Sock him in the beezer, Mase.” George gripped his rifle and licked his lips. “I’m right behind ya.”
“Why don’t you shut your hole,” Nina said through clenched teeth, touching her palm to the Colt Navy on her hip.
“Settle down, goddammit!” Marshal Oden growled, wedging in between Manning and Mason and separating them with his square-shouldered girth. “We need to come together, now. Christ have mercy. Deaduns at the door and here you are ready to skin on one another.”
There was a tense moment as everyone glowered, all except for Buck Patterson who Nina noticed had walked up with a bemused expression. Manning broke the silence. “You’re right, Marshal.” He took a step back. “We all seem a bit frayed at the ends.”
“With good reason,” said Oden, turning to make sure Mason and George were backing down, as well. He looked at Nina, then at her hand on the grip of her gun. “But the last thing we need is to go heels on one another. Now, what about the rest of them?”
Manning gestured to the Other Side and then back toward Pa. “You gonna leave the women behind? How about the hobbled man in the next room?”
Nina peered past Manning’s shoulder, past the priest, and saw Jasmine standing with her arms crossed, watching everyone. The woman looked tired and in low spirits. No surprise there. Nina nodded to her, and Jasmine returned the smallest hint of a nod.
“We never said nothin' about leaving nobody behind,” Mason said.
“But we can't drag em along with us—”
“Goddammit, George.” Mason sounded exasperated with his brother. Not because George was a complete asshole, but that he was potentially tipping their hand—least that’s how Nina saw it.
“We don't know how many of them things are out there,” said Marshal Oden, removing his hat and rubbing the top of his balding head. “Could be a hundred, could be a thousand.”
“What are the deaduns doin'?” Nina thought it was a fair question.
“Look
through any of these holes and all you'll see is them standing there doing nothing.” That was Strobridge.
“Yeah, they ain't doin' shit,” George affirmed.
“Mayhap someone needs to climb topside and have a look around,” Buck offered.
“Needs to be someone small enough not to bring the roof down on our heads,” Mason added, then belched under his breath as he eyeballed Nina.
“Listen, everyone,” Father Mathias spoke, raising his hands for quiet. They looked to the priest, but he just stood there, hands up, kind of looking everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Then, Nina noticed it, too. Total silence. Not a single moan or spine-shuddering cry from outside. Only Grover Buell's quivering complaints reached them from his makeshift pallet Over There. Nina thought about what Red Thunder had said, about the deaduns being tainted, and she wondered to what end Grover's feverish path might lead.
Nina turned to Mathias, lifting her gaze. In the morning light, the priest's eyes were as crystal blue as the surface of a lake. She noticed his trimmed beard and mustache. Properly representing the Lord, she supposed. “I'll go up top, but I'll need someone to boost me.” She glared at Strobridge. “Not you.”
The man smirked and tipped his Stetson.
They looked around for a good spot to put her, finding a place where two beams crossed above the doors they'd come through last night. There was a small place where the wooden slats looked rotted and weak, a hint of light passing through.
Manning put one hand on her shoulder, pointed up with the other. “Now, see where the beams go? Try to stay on them, near the edges if you can. You'll have more support there.”
Nina had already figured that out, but she nodded anyway, tossing her hat down.
Manning and Buck cupped their hands and squatted. Nina put one boot into James's waiting hands and then, with her fingers stretched on their backs for support, stepped up into Buck's.
She gasped as they threw her faster than she expected. Her arms instinctively shot up to cover her head. Her fists met resistance, but then she grasped for purchase through what was left of the old, rotted wood.
Having gotten Nina's feet to their chests, the fellas adjusted their grips and pushed her higher. Nina leaned forward, using her legs now, scrambling and straining until she lay face down on the roof, spitting out bits of moss-covered wood.
She got to her knees, gagging on the stench of rotted meat, which hung thick in the morning air. Her stomach churned, threatening to eject the swallow of water she'd had for breakfast. And then it did, the acrid liquid spewing past her lips to splash on the roof.
Nina squeezed her eyes shut and growled away the pain.
“You okay up there?”
“Yeah,” Nina waited for her roiling stomach to settle and opened her eyes. She wiped away a line of drool hanging from her mouth and looked up...
…impossible…
…several hundred, maybe a thousand, deaduns filled her field of vision. They stood around the bedraggled blockade’s interior like herded cattle, staring straight ahead with blanched, lifeless eyes. Motionless but for some silent jawing, stretching their mandibles and exposing their broken, jagged teeth, an impregnable wall of flesh and bone nearly as far as she could see.
The affliction did not discriminate between race, color, or creed. A family stood holding hands in a grisly display of affection. The little girl’s bonnet sat cockeyed on her head, splashed with dark brown stains. A contingent of rail workers still held picks and axes, dressed in grungy frocks and wide-brimmed hats that cast shadows over their yellow faces. Their boss stood swaying at the front, one arm hewn above the elbow, his remaining fist clenched at his side.
In the daylight, more details burned themselves into Nina’s brain. Some deaduns seemed risen straight from the grave, barely held together by sinew. Maggots and beetles burrowed thick inside torsos, causing their skin to undulate like waves on water. Others were newer; fresh bloat, swollen insides bursting at the seams, bits oozing through the blackened cracks. Nina had a thought and gagged again; what would all this rotted flesh have smelled like in the heights of summer?
And what was this? On the deaduns’ exposed skin were faint symbols like foreign writing traced in weaving lines around forearms, faces, and chests. Had she noticed this before? Likely impossible in the panic and fading light of last night, but what did it mean? She decided right then that this was no malady, no sickness gone wild.
Her first instinct was to run, or just fall back down into the hole and forget she'd even come up here, but she had a job to do. Besides, there was nowhere to run. Nina stepped around the perimeter of the building, testing each wooden shingle with the front of her boot before applying her weight. The roof inclined slightly to the west, tilting down to direct runoff. Nina followed the edge, stopping to look around every few feet. They were completely surrounded by deaduns.
She made out the wall around the fort, sharpened logs piercing upward into a fog rolling in from the hills, very similar to the haze that had followed the undead last night. Dark clouds clustered overhead, moving by too quickly, the sun disappearing and reappearing as patches went by.
Nina felt another swell of hot panic, but she put a lid on it before it boiled over. Her eyes probed the multitudes as she maneuvered to the front, trying to see a way through. The stench had become almost bearable, but there was no way in Hell she'd ever get used to it. She didn't want to get used to it…
Nina’s gaze stopped on a peculiar figure amidst the stinking, swaying corpses. He stood stiffly, donned in white robes with long, wide-mouthed sleeves. His hands were locked together before him, head covered by a faded yellow cowl. He seemed regal, somehow. Old.
He weren’t no deadun. This feller was a living, breathing person standing devil-may-care in the very midst of all that undead flesh.
So why did they not attack him? Was this possibly the one behind this moving mass of decomposing flesh? Of a sudden, she was derned sure of it, though she couldn’t say how.
Only one way to find out.
Nina drew her Colt and took aim, putting the tip of her sight in the center of the man’s hood. She cocked the hammer, pulled the trigger...and a deadun intercepted her bullet. It stepped in front of Yellow Hood at the last second, and the left side of its head exploded. It flopped to the ground. Yellow Hood remained in place, though he turned toward her.
“What’s going on?” Manning hollered up. “You okay?”
She took aim again, but before she could fire, more deaduns stepped in the way, blocking the figure from view. Bastard had himself a meat shield. She eased the hammer home and retracted her weapon.
“Shit.” Nina was shocked at the deliberate ploy. These things couldn’t take orders, could they? But she knew better. She’d seen it back in Coburn Station. Deaduns doing the bidding of someone else, but for what purpose? It was frightening, and also confusing. Nina and Pa, and the rest of their little party, were just regular folks. Fucked up, maybe, but still relatively regular by all standard conventions. What would anyone like Yellow Hood want with them?
“I’m coming down,” she called out.
Nina made her way around the perimeter in the eerie presence of a thousand silent deaduns. She could feel their milky eyes on her, hungering to pull her down and strip her flesh away. She thought about taking a shortcut, crossing down the middle, but couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t bring the whole roof down. After what seemed like forever, she made it to the hole and peered down. Manning and Buck looked up, ready to receive her.
Nina slid down in a hurry, so fast she didn’t see the sliver of wood until it was too late. The sharp piece scraped her side as the fellas gathered her in. “Shit,” she said, checking the wound to find it was only a scratch. Painful, but harmless.
Rachel and Clara Buell suddenly cried out, their high-pitched screams ripping everyone's attention Over There. The women were backing away from where Grover sat against the far wall. The shopkeep had seemed nearly dead just a
second ago and had probably startled them with his sudden rise.
But that wasn't all. Twin orbs of black stared back at them from where his eyes used to be. Round, bottomless marbles that made Nina think of a bug or a lizard. They were the same eyes that had stared back at her from the faces of those deaduns last night. The same as the ones outside that gathered to shield Yellow Hood.
Jasmine, standing nearby, gasped and dropped a bucket of water.
“Pappy!” Rachel screamed, her mother struggling to keep her from running to her father. Marshal Oden strode to help, grabbing the girl by the arm. “Let me go,” she yanked to no avail.
“Stop it,” the marshal told her, also to no avail as the girl kept yanking.
From the face of Grover Buell came a long, pointed tongue. It slithered across his lips and cheeks, licking the chapped face before retreating. The thing inside Grover poured its oily gaze over them, its eyes sending a chill up Nina's spine. “Let the girl come to her father,” it said with a mock smile.
Gun barrels raised and pointed. The clicks of cocking weapons cut the air.
“Guns, guns, guns,” it said, still smiling. “And those wonderful balls of Mister Woodruff's. I'll be happy when you lay your bag of explosives at my feet after you've been turned.” Its accent was the same cut-down English those Celestial coolies used, only more graceful, filled with menace as the words spilled from Grover's lips.
Woodie, his face a swollen mess from Manning’s beat-down, chuckled uncertainly from his corner of the room.
“Grover, why are you doing this?” Clara Buell asked.
Marshal Oden shoved both women toward Buck Patterson. “Get them out of here.”
The roughrider nodded and manhandled the women out while Clara kept asking, “What…what has happened to Grover? Why is this happening?”
Buck didn’t answer, just drew them away with Jasmine’s help, the black woman putting her hands on Rachel’s shoulders as the young girl wept and wailed.